“You remember him?”
“Hell yeah. I remember every one of those meth-heads. They were drama kings like you wouldn’t believe. Divas every one of them and didn’t have shit. I almost got into a fist fight with one of them myself. No loss there. For real. Where you headed?”
“A meeting at Sony,” said Hawk. “After the huge success of the Miley/Carzo collab, they want to do about fifty more.”
“Fifty? Damn, that’s good news.”
“I agree.”
“But why can’t our negotiators handle it?”
“It’s strictly off the record at this point,” Hawk said as he put on his jacket. “They want a chairman-to-chairman meeting before we even address it with the artists they have in mind. We don’t want anybody else involved.”
“And then?”
Hawk knew what he was talking about. “And then what?”
“And then after that meeting, you’re heading straight to Tennessee for the wedding rehearsal and for your family dinner afterwards, right?”
There was no response.
Shelly stared at his childhood friend. Although Hawk was biracial with a white father and a black mother, his outward appearance was decidedly that of a black man. And Hawk was a brother through and through. But that contradiction had always been Hawk for as long as Shelly had known him. His exterior never equaled his interior. He had the look that allowed him to fit right in with the Hip Hop crowd as well as the rockers and stoners, but Shelly knew he was nothing like any of those groups.
Hawk, instead, was a shrewd businessman go-getter from a rich family who never stopped going for more. Who viewed all of that partying and bedhopping and drug usage his singers and producers and songwriters constantly engaged in, even in the studios inside his huge office complex, as the activities of weak and ineffectual people. He was smart and savvy and relished the fact that after only twenty years in the game his record company had more assets and net worth than most labels combined. He was, in Shelly’s view, a glaring contradiction.
“Man, I know you heard me. You have to go.”
“I don’t have to do agotdamn thing.” Hawk’s voice had that sharp edge he was known for. But he wasn’t fooling Shelly.
Especially when Hawk frowned. “Why would I stand up there like some devoted half-brother and support that bullshit, Shell?”
“You aren’t supporting it. You’re supporting your mother. Imagine how she feels, man? Miss Reecie’s been married to your father for forty years. She was only nineteen and was carrying you when they got married. But all those years later, and after she birth five more children for that man, he has this bitch out of wedlock for all the town to see? And she’s not the only one he’s had either. But you know W. He wants all his children together for his daughter’s wedding. And what W wants, W gets. And yet your mother has to sit up there smilinglike y’all one big happy family because that’s what a Webster does? How do you think she feels, man?”
Hawk knew it was true, too, as he zipped up the briefcase, grabbed it off his desk, and began heading for the exit. His mother was a strong woman in every way, but he still couldn’t understand why she still loved and stayed with his father. And why his father, given his antics, constantly confessed his love for her. It was a trainwreck of a marriage that seemed to have no end.
But when he got parallel to his best friend, he stopped walking. They looked into each other’s eyes. As two black men in a corporate world that never wanted them at that level of success, they understood each other. That was why Shelly wasn’t going to let his friend off the hood. “You have to go, man,” he said. “You have to.”
Hawk had more half-brothers than he ever bothered to count, but Shelly, albeit of no blood relation to him, was his true brother. “If I go,” he said, “your ass going with me.”
Shelly, who hailed from the other side of the tracks in Brackenridge, hated going to their hometown as much as Hawk did. But he’d do anything for his best friend. “Cool,” he said.
Hawk laughed out loud because he knew Shelly hated the mere thought of going to that place too. But if Hawk was going to be miserable, his best friend was going to be miserable too.
He squeezed Shelly’s shoulder, told him he was glad he was back to work, and then he left the office.
When he plopped down in his Corvette, he squeezed his eyes shut. Because he’d just walked through the lobby once again that just a month ago was covered in blood. And although it wasn’t true, he couldn’t help but feel as if the blood of that young man, and hiskicked arounddream, was still on his hands.
CHAPTER NINE
The SUV pulled to the curb in front of the high-end boutique and Janita quickly got out from the front passenger seat. Von quickly got out from behind the steering wheel, hurried across the sidewalk, and entered the boutique. His job was to do a fast check inside, to make sure there were no obvious threats present, and then wait outside. Janita’s job was to stay glued to their high dollar client no matter what.
While her brother went inside the boutique, she stood at the back passenger side door, her hand on the knob, as her trained eyes looked around carefully. When she didn’t see any threats either, and when her brother came outside and gave her the all-clear, then she opened the door.
Reecie Webster stepped out with her usual flare for the dramatic. She was always to Janita a sister with an attitude. Tall, black, and proud, she didn’t give a damn what those stuffy bluebloods of Brackenridge thought of her. And although the woman was fifty-eight years old and no spring chicken by any stretch of the imagination, you wouldn’t know it to look at her. Janita had just turned twenty-eight, but that particular sister could give her a run for her money any day of the week.
Janita walked behind her high-stepping client and continued looking around as they made it to the entrance of the clothing boutique. Von opened the door. But as Reecie began walking inside behind their client, Von pointed to his wristwatch to remind his sister to hurry it up. They were already super-late trying to get that woman to the wedding rehearsal, and they both knew it. Von’s fear was that Mr. Webster would start blamingthem for his wife’s constant tardiness, and thereby fire them as her security detail.
But even Von knew there was nothing they could do about it. Reecie Webster was going to do whatever the hell Reecie Webster wanted to do. And nobody, not even her husband, could stop her.
